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Rocky Mountain Goat Meat
Ninh Binh goat meat is more delicious than goat meat from other regions because the goats here are mainly raised on limestone mountains and eat a variety of leaves, so the meat is delicious and firm. Moreover, Ninh Binh people also have their own secret to raising goat meat, so goat meat has quickly become a famous specialty throughout the country.
Goat meat - a specialty of Ninh Binh - is processed into many different dishes, and under the magical hands of the people of this rocky mountain region, each dish has its own delicious and attractive flavor. Such as raw goat with lemon, blood pudding, goat steak, goat hotpot, pan-fried, grilled goat, porridge, red wine sauce, stir-fried... When enjoying, diners not only enjoy the dishes but also fall in love with the wild and wild nature of this place.
Among goat dishes, goat rare dipped in Ban sauce and served with various herbs is a favorite dish of many people. There are three types of goat rare: dipped rare, rolled rare and sesame rare. Of these, sesame rare is the most delicious because it has many spices and especially has the fatty taste and fragrant smell of roasted peanuts.
The ingredients to make goat rare of course cannot lack goat meat, galangal, star fruit, lemongrass, green banana, fig, roasted sesame, soy sauce. To make goat rare delicious, you must know how to choose goat meat. Meat to make rare must have skin and meat, lean meat alone is not delicious. Usually, the flank meat (in pigs, it is pork belly) is the most suitable meat for rare dish. It has tough but soft skin, a little fat but not greasy, lean meat but not dry and fibrous.
Goat meat is dipped in ginger sauce (sour, sweet, spicy, strong), served with herbs such as perilla leaves, figs, basil, Vietnamese coriander, crispy rice paper... Recently, people have been using spring roll leaves to wrap food, which is also interesting.
Crispy rice
Burnt rice in Ninh Binh is one of the dishes that shows the quintessence of rice without exaggeration, without too many variations. It is said that Ninh Binh burnt rice has a long history.
Legend has it that during the French colonial period in the late 19th century, in Ninh Binh, there was a young man named Hoang Thang who went to Hanoi to work for a large Chinese restaurant. Hoang Thang fell in love with the owner's daughter but was opposed by the owner. Unable to marry the owner's daughter, Hoang Thang quit his job and returned to his hometown. During his time working at the restaurant, Hoang Thang learned many secrets of preparing delicious dishes, and he creatively built a restaurant specializing in burnt rice. Later, Dinh Hoang Thang was invited by his old boss to collaborate in opening many new restaurants and marry his daughter. Since then, the delicious burnt rice dish he made has always been associated with a touching love story.
To make burnt rice requires the cook to be really delicate and meticulous. The rice is cooked so that the water is just right, the right amount of sticky. When the rice is cooked, it must be quickly removed, leaving only the burnt part at the bottom of the pot. Then continue to cook, at this time, the cook must cook moderately, the cook rotates the pot so that the rice is cooked evenly and creates an even burnt layer. Next, people take these burnt pieces out of the pot, break them into bite-sized pieces and dry them (or dry them) to make them easy to preserve. When enjoying the rice, it will be fried crispy. During the frying process, the burnt rice dish can be marinated with some spices to make it the most flavorful and delicious. Some people also like to cover the burnt rice with a layer of ivory-white floss, which is extremely attractive to eat.
The unseasoned burnt rice is dipped in a rich sauce of fish sauce, scallion oil, and pork floss. The burnt rice pieces are not dry at all, but melt in your mouth, delicious and with a hint of wildness in each grain of rice.
Kim Son eel salad
Coming to Kim Son land of Ninh Binh, you can not only sip the spicy taste of wine but also enjoy the extremely fresh and attractive specialty of eel salad. Eel salad is famous in Trang Cat, Hai Phong, but coming here, you will also enjoy equally delicious fish salad dishes. According to the people here, every 2-month rainy season is the season to catch eel. Eel is related to eel but eels live in slightly salty water (root eel) and live in brackish water (burnt eel). Root eel is big and wide, burnt eel is long. Eel is similar to eel in length, but its width is like eel. Eel can be several meters long, small ones are 3-4 taels, large ones weigh up to a kilogram. Eel is slippery and fierce, so catching it is not easy.
Making eel salad - a Ninh Binh specialty - is not difficult, but under the skillful hands of Kim Son people, eel salad has become a specialty. According to the experience of those who often make this salad, to prevent the salad from smelling fishy, after catching the fish, people must use lime water, ash water, and bamboo leaves to clean off the slime on the skin.
Fish butchering is also a little different from usual, you have to cut the fish from the back like you would an eel to remove the bones. Fresh fish meat cut into slices has a pink color similar to the color of snakehead fish meat, very eye-catching. The rice powder is made from roasted sticky rice, crushed to have a fragrant and rich smell. When everything is done, you have to quickly mix the fish meat with the rice powder to make the meat fragrant.
The fish skin is fried until crispy and then rolled into the salad when eaten. An interesting thing is that the fish bones are not thrown away after filtering, but are crushed to make vinegar. The vinegar is mixed with ginger, garlic, chili, pepper and chopped lemongrass. The vinegar must be dark red, thick, and have a spicy aroma. When poured into the salad, it will not drip onto your hands. The salad is eaten with sesame rice paper, along with leaves such as fish mint, coriander, fig, ginseng, and hairy apricot...
Yen Mac sour sausage
Nem chua is the most famous specialty of Thanh Hoa people, but coming to Yen Mac, Yen Mo district of Ninh Binh, diners will be surprised by the equally delicious nem chua here.
Yen Mac sour sausage has been around for a long time, but currently, not many people can make this special type of sausage. The sausage must be dry and loose (while Thanh Hoa sour sausage is a cohesive mass, not loose) while still maintaining its soft, delicious flavor. People often choose meat from the back thigh or the upper part along the back of the pork loin to make it. The lean meat is carefully filtered, thinly sliced across the grain, and pounded in a mortar. In the sausage, mix a little bit of pork skin fibers in the appropriate ratio. The thinly sliced skin fibers are mixed together and tightly adhere to the lean meat, standing out against the rosy background of the lean meat, looking very beautiful and attractive.
Yen Mac sour sausage is usually wrapped in a layer of guava leaves for fragrance, then a layer of fresh, thick banana leaves. The sausage is wrapped tightly and sealed so that it can ferment quickly. Making sour sausage is so elaborate, but people are most excited when enjoying it. The eyes full of longing are glued to the hands slowly peeling off each layer of banana leaves. When the last leaf is removed, the red-pink sausage meat is revealed, with a wonderful sour and fragrant smell. The sausage is soft and loose, extremely attractive. The best sausage is eaten with fig leaves, guava leaves, or ginseng leaves... then dipped in a bowl of fish sauce with lemon, garlic, chili... All the flavors seem to be condensed on the tip of the tongue, creating an unforgettable aftertaste.
Rock snail
Nature has given Ninh Binh another special dish, which is something that rarely lives in the mountains: Snails. This type of mountain snail can be found in many places in Ninh Binh province, but it reproduces and lives most concentratedly in Tam Diep, Yen Mo, Nho Quan. Mountain snails usually only appear in the wet rainy season, from April to August. And the rest of the year, they often bury themselves underground, in rock crevices or under thick layers of leaves.
In addition, Ninh Binh is also famous for delicious dishes such as Gia Vien shrimp paste, Phat Diem vermicelli with mushrooms, perch sour soup, eel vermicelli, fake dog duck, grilled straw fish in harvest season, ant egg sticky rice... And each of these dishes contributes to the uniqueness and interest of this wild, rocky land.
If you have the opportunity to visit Ninh Binh, bring back a special gift from this place for your family and friends. Surely, no one can forget the rich flavors blended in each specialty dish, the things that make up the potential culinary vitality of people in the ancient capital.
